Epic Games Pulled Their Pre-Roll Ads from YouTube

February 21, 2019

Epic Games stopped promoting their pre-roll ads on YouTube videos because of the rising problem with playing ads on videos that predators use to exploit children. The most disturbing issue here is the comment section abused by pedophiles leaving harassing replays or sharing disturbing content and YouTube algorithms suggesting videos that are popular with pedophiles.

Epic Games' spokesperson explained that they paused all pre-roll ads on YouTube "Through our advertising agency, we have reached out to YouTube to determine actions they’ll take to eliminate this type of content from their service".

As Wired reports, YouTube spokesperson stated that the company "enforced its policies 'aggressively' and reported any content, including comments, that endangers minors to relevant authorities" and added: "When we find content that is in violation of our policies, we immediately stop serving ads or remove it altogether".

The most troubling comments are in Spanish, Russian and Portuguese, which means that YouTube should probably fix predatory detection for non-English languages.

This isn't the first time such problems were addressed. In 2017 appeared first reports of pedophiles commenting on channels with content showing children and minors. YouTube promised to mend the problem, but that year significant companies that were plugging their ads on this streaming platform pulled them. That situation was named by the content community "adpocalypse".